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Insurance
An update of the issues
By Steve Quinn, Managing Director, Artex Risk Solutions (Gibraltar) Limited
The biggest danger following the United Kingdom (UK) and Gibraltar’s departure from the European Union (EU) for any insurance company or intermediary is a loss of passporting rights. Passporting is the ability, for example, for a UK or Gibraltar insurer or intermediary to conduct business in any EU member state. If a business is licensed in the UK or Gibraltar, under current EU rules and regulations following appropriate notification to its local (Home) regulator it is deemed to be able to operate throughout the EU. This authority exists without the requirement for separate authorisation in each individual (Host) jurisdiction.
The number of insurers and intermediaries enjoying passporting rights from the UK and Gibraltar into the EU runs to thousands in total and the dangers posed by Brexit are that these privileges will be stopped unless
corrective action is taken. The difficulty that the market is
faced with is the complete uncertainty caused by the political machinations in the UK and the seemingly intransigent position being adopted by the European Commission in Brussels.
As a consequence of this wholly confused position regulated entities need to be planning for the worst and then perhaps hoping for something better than this.
Hard Brexit
Transition arrangements have been talked about but these are still not set in stone. UK regulators are offering EU insurers access until the end of 2020 and possibly beyond, but this position has yet to be reciprocated by the EU. Equally it is not apparent (probably extremely unlikely) whether such transitional arrangements would still be allowed to apply if the UK experiences a
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Gibraltar International
www.gibraltarinternational.com